Who is Using X11's LBX and RX Features?

tjansen asks: "In 1998 Open Group released X11R6.4, which introduced two nifty features called LBX (Low Bandwidth X) and RX (Remote Execution). LBX reduced the bandwidth needed by the X protocol, and RX made it possible to embed a remote X11 application securely into a Netscape plugin. Since version 4.0 both are also included in XFree86. Together they look like a nice and platform-independent solution for Application Service Providers (there are Windows clients, of course) and I wonder why I have never seen anybody using this."

Comments

I would use RX if I could

[Tet]

I have an application that runs fine on our Linux and Solaris machines, but isn't available for Windows. I'd love to use RX to give the Windows desktops access to the app via a plugin. Unfortunately, the RX plugin doesn't seem to be maintained any more, and furthermore, it crashed mozilla on my test box :-(

Re:SSH Does Compression

[tjansen]

www.broadwayinfo.com

Re:SSH Does Compression

[adolf]

Perhaps the X Consortium (or the Open Group or whatever those officious corporate ass-sucking whores called themselves then) had something to do with it, when they changed their license to something less free along with the release of X11 R6.4 -- the first release with LBX and RX -- only to change it back some months later. This sort of thing tends to slow down development of projects like XFree86, while bittering people at the same time.

It's now three years later, XFree86 4.x is looking completely stable, along with LBX, RX, and a slew of other things that nobody ever uses. It is uncertain to me whether or not it will ever make a difference, at this point. At the time of LBX's birthing (early 1998), bandwidth was nearly nonexistant for everyone, and such a thing made sense for a great number of people.

That said, I'd like to use LBX. I want to run [gnutella|napster|mojonation|freenet] on a high-bandwidth linux box with a DDS-2 drive, while sitting at home behind a trio of 28.8 modems (ie, "As Good As It Gets In Rural Ohio"). Never underestimate the bandwidth of a Chevy Beretta filled to the brim with DAT carts.

I've used differential X (dxpc) with some success, but it uses particularly ugly methods of interfacing with the client software, and requires being set up before each session. I've also used ssh's gzip compression and X11 forwarding, which isn't anywhere near as fast, but is at least transparent in use.

LBX and RX/Broadway would seem to serve both purposes admirably. Too bad that in this chicken/egg scenario, the bird just won't lay any eggs.

SSH Does Compression

[carbon60]

Since SSH does compression, as well as automatic X forwarding, I've never seen the need to use LBX.

RX sounds interesting, where can we get more info?

Thanks.

--
Adam Sherman

Re:SSH Does Compression

[JordanH]

You may have heard of RX under it's more common name, Broadway.

Under any other name, it's still not used at all...

Hummingbird, IIRC, used to run a broadway.com (or was it .org?) web site, but both of those are run by, you guessed it, Broadway (you know, like NY Theatre) organizations now.

I don't know why Broadway wasn't more popular. It's really a mystery to me. It's sad, but I think it has to mean that there just weren't any compelling X applications that could beat out the native Windows or Java apps on the Web desktop.

Re:SSH Does Compression

[JordanH]

I'm sure the "Open Group" changing their license didn't help matters at all, but that happened over a year after Broadway had been released. I think you are late with your birthdate of LBX, also. I thought it game along in X11R6.3 in 1996 with RX.

I worked for a company that was investigating Broadway back when it first came out for our X application, but interest in Broadway just fizzled.

My guess is that at that time everybody wanted Java apps or native apps.

Really, RX/LBX were never very impressive over slow links, so you either had X and enough bandwidth to support the app, or you didn't and then you didn't want RX/LBX anyway. There's your chicken/egg scenario.

Why Not LBX?

[4of12]

The number of users of X is a small proportion of the internet as a whole.

Those that do use X fall into 2 categories

1. Bandwidth rich LANs
2. Home users with a Linux box over PPP to an ISP

In the first case, there's little need to worry about introducing any more complexity to support remote X applications. Despite all the hoopla over a network based windowing system, the only time I take advantage of it is to run remote X terminal sessions (rxvt) to my display. Am I BW limited? No way.

Meanwhile, in the second case, I am BW limited, but using LBX does not address my problems running a Linux box at home. I run a browswer and all X clients locally and display locally. Maybe once I ran exmh on the ISP's machine just to see what it was like having direct disk access to my mail, but it generally didn't seem worth the hassle. Any graphics attachments still had to be rendered over a slow pipe.

If they had put LBX into the low level infrastructure from the beginning, so that all X protocol would use it transparently, then it would have been great. Otherwise, IMHO, it's just a great idea still looking for problem to solve.

Re:Why Not LBX?

[stilwebm]

You forgot people using X based workstations over some form of broadband connection, whether it is a xDSL, ISDN, cable, satellite, etc. Back when I lived in a neighborhood with DSL, I found it very useful to run X apps from work remotely. At the time I used SSH connection forwarding and its compression, but at times that was still too unresponsive to keep me happy. Since LBX is optimized compression for X (ssh uses gzip I belive for its compression), I'm sure it would use the resources better. Now that I'm down to 33.6Kbps PPP at home, I'm not sure that even LBX will be enough to make it bearable. And I doubt LBX will do much for rendering graphics like you mention.